The US Department of Justice Withdraws Fraud Charges Against BitClout Founder

On March 19th, according to the report by Decrypt, the U.S. Department of Justice has dismissed fraud charges against Nader Al-Naji, the founder of the decentralized social network BitClout. Court documents indicate that the New York federal prosecutor applied to have the charges against Al-Naji dropped, and this request was approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry J. Ricardo on February 28th. Previously, the Department of Justice had charged Al-Naji with one count of telecommunications fraud, alleging that he had deceived investors of $3 million and used the funds for his family, friends, and a luxurious lifestyle. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also dropped civil charges against this former Google engineer at the end of February. BitClout is a decentralized social network that tokenizes Twitter user identities and has received support from prominent investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, and the Winklevoss brothers of Gemini.